Call to penalise schools that ‘cherry pick’

Large numbers of disadvantaged children are being excluded by Limerick second-level schools hiding behind their admissions policies, a local principal told TDs and senators yesterday.

Noel Malone, principal of Coláiste Chiaráin in Croom, warned that a proposal in draft legislation to allow schools to continue to set aside places for past pupils’ children would allow such practices to continue and penalise those with open enrolment systems.

He told an Oireachtas Education Committee hearing on the scheme of a school admission bill published last autumn by Education Minister Ruairi Quinn that a common application process used in Limerick is flawed.

“Ironically, participant schools are given a wide level of protection from any imputation of perpetuating inequality by using the scheme as a kind of cover,” he said.

Mr Malone said some schools with high demand for places draw from a wider geographical area because they are in areas of ageing population, but their admissions policies do not observe a spirit of inclusiveness.

“Some schools apply preferential criteria such as favouring children living in certain affluent areas, cherry-picking traditional feeder schools, brothers and sisters of past pupils, sons and daughters of past pupils and so on. In effect, very few places are left . . . as schools have pretty much wrapped up the preferred clientele and end up sending refusal letters to many disappointed 12-year-olds,” he said.

Instead of giving schools licence to continue favouring the socially advantaged by allowing in the bill for admission policies reserving up to one-in-four places for children of past pupils, he said children living near a school should have priority after siblings of current students. If Mr Quinn proposes to impose a system like Limerick in areas where problems emerge, he said it should be on the basis that all schools use the same criteria to decide which applicants get priority.

Labour TD and former primary principal Aodhán Ó Riordáin agreed that the 25% limit is not necessary, although it might be an improvement in some areas.

“We have a minority of schools who will use their admission policies to keep their schools as mono-cultural as possible, as middle class as possible, and you have a situation where you have school A, school B and school C [in an area] and school C tends to get all the Traveller children, all the immigrant children and all the children with special needs,” he said.

Derval Duggan, a parent and teacher, said passing the bill in its present form would add another layer of hypocrisy to current laws and rules governing the education system.

“Thousands of school mission statements welcome diversity but some children are made to feel very different or are turned away. The minister says anti-bullying policies must emphasise the dangers of homophobic bullying while the patron of most of our schools teaches that homosexuality is an objective disorder,” she said.